Another Answer
by Seelowe
Summary: Two years into the Abyssal War and a year after the first shipgirl took to the ocean, a strange new arrival has the world on edge.
1. PRL: Outside Context Problem

**_Another Answer_**

Prelude

 _Outside Context Problem_

* * *

 _Here's your mission briefing._

 _We want you to go through the Alaska Gate and support the other Earth's governments in their Abyssal War._

 _As far as we know from hacking into their databases and spies sent through the Gate, the Abyssals are alien entities that appeared two years ago in their world. Taking on the form of warped versions of World War II vessels and occasionally twisted humanoids, they are currently pushing back humanity on the other side of the Gate. We cannot allow this to happen, because if the other Earth falls, the Alaska Gate will be their springboard into our Earth._

 _You will be assigned a full support company for this mission. The Alaska Gate opens and closes every month, and you will be expected to stay there until the end of the War. The support company will be stocked with as much supplies for your NEXT as they can, and more supplies will come once the Gate opens again._

 _The League and ORCA will send other LYNX not tied up in anti-insurgent operations and hunting rogue LYNX through the Gate when it opens on our end. Do note that support may not come for quite some time, but when it does, they will be top LYNX much like yourself. The League and ORCA will spare no expense in combating the Abyssal threat._

 _Kojima pollution will not be a problem during this mission, as Omer and TORUS' recently invented Kojima Filter will reduce the environmental impact of your NEXT to non-negligible levels._

 _This is a very important task we are giving you, and you will be paid accordingly. We're_ _counting on you._

* * *

The explosions threw up great gouts of sand as they rippled through the beach.

In an instant, the peace that had been present was shattered, chaos reigning as those who managed to survive the first round of shelling making their way back into the town, screaming all the way.

Coastal raids were not uncommon. In some parts of Japan, it was a fact of life. The shipgirls, the personifications the warships that had fought in the titanic clashes on the high seas during mankind's greatest conflict, could only defend so much of the nation's coastline with their limited numbers.

They were still a relatively new phenomenon – only appearing at the turn of this year. The JMSDF were still working out new doctrines, ways to work with such powerful women with their steel-hull vessels. It would be inevitable that things would slip through the cracks, and this was no different.

It didn't stop from Shido Shimada cursing his current situation, crouching in the ruins of a store.

 _Fuck! Of all the damn times-_

The day was supposed to be a day out with his little sister and her friend – he was just a glorified chaperone while the girls hung around the beach and ogled other boys their age. He'd wandered off to get himself a drink because the weather was sweltering, leaving behind his two charges at the beach.

Then the Abyssals had to turn up.

His ears still ringing from the shell that had just detonated nearby, he forced himself to stand up and look around.

Smoke was beginning to rise in columns as the Abyssals fired on the town, the thunder of their guns hammering against his ears. Interspersed between detonations and the low drone of Abyssal aircraft were screams - no doubt from fleeing men and women.

The teenager ducked again when he saw one of the Abyssal aircraft soar over his position, before bringing himself up again and yelling out into the open;

 _"Mihari!? Natsuki!? Where are you?!"_

Shido didn't expect a reply to come so soon.

" _Shido-nii! We're here!"_

His head whipped to the side, seeing the frames of his little sister and Natsuki, dirty but very, very much alive, just down the street, Mihari Shimada waving her arms. Relief washed over him; they weren't at the beach like he thought they were. That made it much easier.

He ignored the ugly coiling of his stomach at the thought of either of them being killed in the opening strike on the beach just minutes earlier.

"I'm coming over!" Shido yelled, eyes darting up to the sky and to the coastline, before running over to them. He cringed when he heard a scream cut short by another detonation, shutting his eyes and willing himself to run faster.

When Shido reached his two charges, Mihari crashed into him, sobbing into his chest.

"It- it was horrible…"

Shido pulled his little sister into a hug, turning his gaze to Natsuki.

"What happened?" he whispered.

The girl looked up, eyes red and sniffling. "One of the boys we were talking to in the store d-died. We heard the Abyssals start shooting and he just exploded-"

His sister seemed to cry even harder into his chest, and his grip on her tightened. He didn't know what it would be like to see someone get turned into bloody chunks right in front of you - but if they stayed any longer, he'd be forced to find out.

"It's okay, it's okay." he breathed, pulling the other girl close for a quick hug before pushing them away, hands on their shoulders and giving them a look. "We'll...we'll get through this. Okay? We just need to run."

Two shaky nods was what Shido received in reply. They'd stopped crying, though their expressions were still quaking with the slightest amount of fear.

He turned his gaze from his two charges to the beach not a scant few meters away, and shuddered.

The horizon had turned a horrid black, with the distinct shapes of Abyssal aircraft carriers and cruisers appearing and sailing towards the broken and battered town. The air was starting to be filled with more low droning than the sounds of panicked people trying to escape, and the sounds of Abyssal guns were growing closer and closer.

Shido gritted his teeth. This was starting to get out of hand. He turned his gaze back to Natsuki and Mihari, slipping on what was hopefully a confident expression. "We can't stay here. Let's g-"

The last part of his sentence was cut off by a shell landing close to them, the sudden roar enough to jolt him. His mouth opened, and he let out a single command. "Go!"

The girls turned and started running. He picked up the pace himself, willing his aching legs to carry him forward. They just needed to get to the hills, and they'd be out of range of the shelling-

Whatever Natsuki and Mihari were saying were indistinct to his hears, ringing as they were from how close the shell had landed near him. A part of Shido's mind that wasn't dazed noted that it was a stroke of luck that he hadn't been killed by the blast.

"-ou alright?! Shido-nii!"

"Y-yeah." he breathed shakily, "I'm fine."

He staggered as he stood up, but pain lanced through his right leg. The only reason that he didn't crash back down on the ground was because Mihari and Natsuki were supporting him.

"Ffffffffff..." Shido sucked in a breath through his teeth.

Today was not a good day. Not at all.

* * *

He stood in front of his two charges as a human shield, staring defiantly into the hate-filled blue eyes of the Ri-class cruiser before him.

 _I never thought I'd be doing something like this._

Out of concern for his leg wounded leg, the two girls had set him down in the open-air ruins of an apartment in a quiet section of the town, still too close to the shoreline for his liking, but he couldn't complain.

It was then that this particular Ri-class cruiser - something he recognised from memorizing the list of known Abyssals with humanoid forms - had popped up out of nowhere, savage grin only conveying one meaning.

Shido cursed himself for not remembering that the Abyssals resorting to using their humanoid versions as landing troops once the coastline had fallen. It was been on the news all the time, army units engaging them in fierce and utterly brutal urban combat that ended in massive casualties on both sides; all a part of the ongoing Abyssal War.

All it took for this to happen was a single slip of the mind, and now they were going to pay the price.

Well, _him_ , mostly. Natsuki would drag Mihari out of here - behind that demure demeanor of hers lay a steely core. Silk hiding steel. This last stand of his was going to be a delaying action for his two charges to run from this place as fast as they could to live another day.

Shido sucked in a deep breath, trying his absolute hardest to ignore his sister's anguished cries.

The Abyssal screeched, rearing her arm back-

-and with only the sound of a high-pitched whine as a warning, the grotesque woman _exploded_.

Shido turned his body to shield the two from the explosion of gore with a yelp, feeling chunks of dead Abyssal slap against him and slide down his body. His ears rung once more, before everything seemed to still.

 _What the hell?_

Shido cracked one eye open, looking up.

He expected many things. The air force was at the forefront of his thoughts and hopes; the knights of the sky, coming in from over the horizon as the cavalry to save the day. Just like in those American movies.

A giant robot floating in the air was most certainly not what he was expecting to be his saviour.

It was incredibly sleek. Lean, tall, and _thin._ Painted white with red highlights here and there. It was like staring at a masterpiece of engineering, what with all the curves that its frame showed. If he squinted enough, he could even see the shimmer of a round force field that encased it.

But what truly caught his attention was the gun it was holding in its' right grip, crackling with orange energy and aimed at the spot where the giant Abyssal was.

"What is that?" Mihari whispered, craning her head to look up at the sight above the trio.

"I…don't know."

The whole situation seemed so _surreal_ \- like he was only half awake and half dreaming. Shido expected to just wake up any moment now, and he would be in bed with an angry Mihari ready to scold him for sleeping in; but he knew that this was all too real.

The mech turned it's attention from them to the harbour, where the Abyssal fleet continued to bombard what was left of the town with impunity. Shadowy figures were beginning to rise from the blackened waters - more humanoid Abyssals.

Another high pitched whine scraped against Shido's ears, and it shot off towards the bay, propelled by a great gout of white coming from it's back.

His grip on Mihari and Natsuki slackened, before his arms fell to his sides, entirely limp. And against all of his instincts to run the other way, Shido turned on his heel and hobbled after it.

The two girls yelled at him to come back, but he paid them no heed, mind focused on one thought: _what the hell was that? It just came out of nowhere!_

He came to a stop at the shattered pavement overlooking the once-pristine beach, ignoring the throbbing pain of his leg, and looked on in awe, Mihari and Natsuki coming up short behind him and gasping for breath - though that quickly turned into stunned silence as they watched the sight before them.

The mech was jinking wildly from left to right, weaving between streams of gunfire as the massive guns of the Abyssal cruisers were slowly redirected from the ruined town to the incredibly _fast_ machine. Not a single shot hit it; each and every shell sailed over into the horizon, wasted.

Shido felt like he was watching a dance; a deadly dance, admittedly, but it was eerie to watch but he could not force himself to look away. There was something about it that seemed _off_ , like he was watching a real human perform those insane maneuvers.

He was also dimly aware of people crawling out from the ruins of the town to observe the spectacle, but he ignored them in favor of watching the battle.

The mech's hand shot out with it's gun arm, sending an orange beam crashing into a cruiser and _splitting it in half_. It dropped down to the waters next to a carrier, left hand lighting up in a blinding purple _laser blade_ that slashed through it's hull with nigh-contemptuous ease, before it threw itself to the side to avoid being hit by a shell.

The scenes repeated, again and again. Aircraft were swatted out of the sky by it's back mounted machine gun. The rods mounted on the other side of the machine gun went ramrod straight and fanned out like an eagle spreading it's wings, sending missiles crashing into destroyers and cruisers, gutting them like fish. The laser blade would flare, sending a carrier to the bottom of the harbor. Even the mighty battleships that had shown up were nothing but chaff before it; the gun would plow through it's armor and render it useless.

And through it all, it did not get hit once.

With another swing of it's blade, the last destroyer's hull groaned, before it faded into darkness.

Shido didn't know who started the cheer. But soon the crowd of survivors gathered at the pavement is electrified, yelling praises towards the mech as it floated serenely, facing the sea. He himself, along with Mihari and Natsuki, are caught up in the moment as well, shouting at the top of their lungs and waving their fists in the air like the rest.

For it's part, the mech turned around to the crowd, giving the slightest bow of it's head in acknowledgement, sending another fresh wave of vigor to ripple through the crowd as they shouted more adulation.

 _It was supposed to be a normal day_ , Shido thought as the mech's eyes flared red before it turned it's gaze back to the ocean, _but I think I'll remember this day for years to come._

* * *

By the time the shipgirls had arrived, their mysterious saviour in white had already shot off into the distance, leaving no sign that it was ever there.

* * *

 **COLLARED RANK 9/ORCA RANK 5**

LYNX Name: ?

AC Name: Dissent

An enigmatic former Omer LYNX who joined ORCA and fought alongside them during the League-ORCA War that saw the success of the Closed Plan. She pilots a LAHIRE frame armed with an eclectic range of weaponry, and is considerably more powerful than her rank suggests. Known to have a brother/sister relationship with Collared's Rank 1 LYNX, Strayed.


	2. 01: Dismal Enigma

_**Another Answer**_

01

 _Dismal Enigma_

* * *

Admiral Daisuke Kirihara rubbed his face for what felt like the umpteenth time this afternoon.

"It wiped out _another_ fleet?"

Before him, the four destroyers of DesDiv6 nodded. His gaze flickered from them to the purple-haired woman standing behind them - Tenryuu. She sighed, twirling her sword briefly before speaking. "It shot it's weird laser cannon and basically made half the fleet explode. The ones that didn't get shot by the cannon got sliced with it's laser blade, and anything that was left was sunk by it's missiles before it shot off to wherever the fuck it came from."

That was how reports on the mech - he would've called it a Gundam if not for it's strange frame - always ended. 'No enemy survivors, all ships sunk.'

A sigh escaped his lips. There wasn't much they could glean from that. "I see. You're dismissed; get some rest."

Once the door shut with a muted click, the woman standing behind him spoke up as he steepled his fingers. "It is quite the enigma, isn't it?"

"...it really is." the Admiral replied, almost sullenly, before turning to regard his aide. "It's been a month since it showed up, and not a single soul knows _what_ the hell it is, or _where_ it came from."

Battleship Nagato, lead ship of her class and one of the first wave of shipgirls to answer humanity's cry for help, only let out a sharp exhale as she brought up the tablet she was carrying. "The media are calling it 'White Glint'. It is fitting, considering it's color scheme and how fast it moves."

"And how fast it seems to disappear."

White Glint - and that was a strange name to say - had appeared at the beleaguered island of Sadogashima exactly one month from the current date, saving the island's populace from being slaughtered by the Abyssals when they had appeared out of nowhere and shelled the coastline. The fleet was quite substantial - no less than six aircraft carriers, four battleships and numerous escort ships in the form of destroyers and light cruisers.

It destroyed the fleet in under two minutes.

By the time the nearby naval base had dispatched their shipgirl contingent, the machine had disappeared over the horizon just as quickly as it had appeared, leaving the fleet with the task of patrolling the island to prevent another attack.

Daisuke still remembered the look of awe on the boy's face, being interviewed by a news station after the attack and holding his two charges close.

 _"It...it came out of nowhere. Killed a Ri-class cruiser that was about to squash me, then turned around and just wiped out the Abyssal fleet. They didn't even manage to hit it. Not once. It moved too fast, too reactive - l-like it was_ human _._ "

Since it's first sighting, White Glint had appeared all around the Pacific theater of the Abyssal War. Shipgirls and steel-hull crews from both the USN and the JMSDF reported that it would openly engage fleets that were heading to attack coastal cities and important ports, destroying them with almost practiced ease. Of course, it was still only one mech, and it couldn't be everywhere at once, but _damn_ if it wasn't quick to show up.

People working in the intelligence branches were also quick to suspect that it was behind the annihilation of known Abyssal fleets that had been congregating in their 'claimed' territory in the Pacific before they could launch an assault on a country of their choosing for the past seven months.

For their part, the Abyssals hadn't been able to so much as _hit_ the speedy mech. It was too fast, jinking wildly with those boosters that it had that allowed it to dodge naval rifle shells and flak shells while White Glint punished every missed shot with a blast from it's laser cannon or by rushing up to the superstructure of the ships and slashing at it with it's laser blade.

And just like that kid from the interview said, it moved like a human.

What was it that the British politician said? A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma? It was an apt description of what they actually _knew_ about the damn thing.

Daisuke leaned back in his chair with a loud groan before burying his face in his desk. "This is gonna bug me for the next few months, I swear."

"Until you get even the slightest bit of information about it, Admiral." Nagato replied, eyes not once leaving the tablet's screen.

"Even then!" he yelled, sitting up ramrod straight in his desk. "It's like- I don't know, eating the slightest bit of chocolate from a bar offered to you and then bugging the one offering it for more!" He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. "It's the biggest mystery of the world right now, Nagato. The absolute _biggest_. Everyone wants to know even the slightest bit of information on it. The Russians, the Americans, the Chinese - even our own government. "

The battleship sighed, placing the tablet on the table before her admiral. The screen's display was merely a list of all of White Glint's sightings near the coastlines of the United States and Japan. "I don't suppose we could try to contact it when it appears? Surely it would respond if we hailed it."

"See, that's the thing. Every time we've tried to make contact with it - and that includes the Americans - it just ignores us and shoots off into the sunset. There's two possibilities; either it's a full automaton that can't speak, or it's piloted by a human and they just don't want to speak to us."

Nagato pursed her lips, tapping her foot idly. "The latter would explain why it seems so fluid in it's movements. _Practiced._ "

"I guess. But it must be some pretty high-tech systems if it can react fast enough to dodge naval rifle shots by throwing itself out of the way. But then we run into _another_ problem; with the way that it does it's aerial maneuvers, any regular human would just get squashed flat. Human bodies just aren't made to survive the kind of forces that White Glint subjects itself to during battle."

Daisuke's aide sucked in a breath. "...very true."

"If it's a full robot, then it's a pretty damn good one." Daisuke continued, unaware of the "Those reaction times aren't something to sneeze at. The way it moves is as if it's just dancing in the air or the water; it's like the creator _wanted_ to make something absurdly powerful and _human_ in the way it moves, and White Glint was the result..."

Glancing at the tablet, where the video of White Glint's Sadogashima appearance was playing, Nagato could only shake her head. "By this point, Admiral, I don't think we'll ever get to a conclusion until White Glint decides to make contact with us."

Fiddling with his cap, Daisuke groaned, eyes flickering up to the fan that was spinning lazily above his head. "A dismal engima, this thing is."

"Indeed."

* * *

"Good work out there, Magnolia."

The helmet came off with a click and a hiss, and the face of White Glint's pilot emerged, black hair spilling onto her shoulders and aristocratic features scrunched up slightly as if in thought.

"You know, Strayed's gonna bitch to me when he comes through the Gate next month for pinching you. Malzel's a pretty good operator, granted, but I'm sure he's already starting to miss your contralto in his ear." A pause. "Even if he won't admit it."

The operator of both Collared's rank 1 and rank 9 NEXTs, Kasumi Sumika - formerly known under the alias 'Serene Haze' - merely shot her a look with her golden eyes, coupled with an almost unnoticeable blush before she threw a cigarette pack to the pilot. "He'll...be fine. He's just hunting Liliana remnants - nothing a LYNX of his caliber can't handle. And besides, Malzel can only do so much paperwork before he gets bored."

Magnolia Vermillion tch'd, catching the offered pack. Fishing out a cigarette, she placed it in her mouth and lit it with practiced ease, letting the nicotine wash over her nerves before she replied. "I can't understand why that man puts himself through that hell. Get Thermidor to do it."

"Thermidor is busy with getting Line Ark up to speed now that the old administration's been purged. His charisma's making it easier for the Cradle populations to, ah, _integrate_ with Line Ark's own. Well, the ones that can fit, anyway. Public speaking is his thing, not sitting around and stamping papers."

Magnolia barked out a laugh. "True, that. At least he's putting his natural gift to use."

Silence reigned between the two women for a few moments as Magnolia took a drag from her cigar, interspersed between the sounds of the League-supplied support team poring over Magnolia's TYPE-LAHIRE, before the operator spoke. "This Earth's quite strange, isn't it?"

"...it's different. A lot different to our one."

It was an understatement. For both of them, people who grew up in the death throes of the governments and lived through the National Dismantlement War, the Lynx War _and_ the Economic War, the Earth that their home was linked to was almost _alien_.

A world where the governments had yet to topple and where companies were the supporting pillars of a society rather than rulers over the populace. Space was not a distant dream locked behind the bars of their own making, but a realm that was readily accessible to them.

And of course, there was still green life breathing on it's surface, unmarred by the sins of the corporations and unblemished by destruction and Kojima pollution unleashed during the Lynx and Economic Wars.

"Green and blue, not all that much brown." Magnolia murmured, finishing off the last of her cigar and flicking the butt off the ledge of the platform. She looked to her NEXT, hold in it's restraints and head bowed before her. "And it's being threatened by weird alien bastards coming from the bottom of the sea."

Full information about the enemy she'd been waging a one-woman war on for the past eight months was scarce - almost incredulously so. The intelligence agents that was attached to her support team had only managed to reach the same understanding that the governments of this Earth had come to regarding the Abyssals: they were only here to kill off humanity.

They were, in essence, an enemy that only sought destruction for it's own sake, and nothing else. Videos of Abyssals savaging coastal towns had already circulated throughout the hidden base, where they slaughtered the populace before the army arrived.

It reminded her of the madman that had been ORCA's Rank 4, Old King, who decided that killing the Cradles' populace by sending the massive airborne habitats crashing into the ground way forward.

ORCA was justified on the grounds that the Arteria facilities, the giant power plants that provided power to the Cradles, would be used to instead power the Ehrenberg anti-satellite batteries, which would take out the web of Assault Cells - laser cannons programmed to shoot down anything in orbit launched during the times before the National Dismantlement War - above Earth to clear the path to space to escape their dying cradle. Old King merely wanted to kill those in the skies for the sake of it.

Magnolia had felt an almost savage glee when she shunted her laser blade through his cockpit and watched his NEXT fall to Earth.

"Not so much threatened as it is a possibility, Magnolia." Kasumi retorted. "You're here, after all, and soon enough Strayed will be, and later on, the rest of the Brigade and other Collared LYNX. I heard from this month's suppliers that the League is thinking of sending some of Omer's Arms Forts through for assistance."

"Eclipses?"

"Yes. They've installed Kojima filters on them, just like your NEXT, so you don't need to worry about them causing pollution."

A whistle. "They're not fucking around. Gotta love the idea of having HI-lasers shooting at the Abyssals instead of having those lasers shooting at me for being a fucking traitor. God knows that."

Kasumi snorted. "I never pegged you for a religious person, but alright." She ignored Magnolia flipping her off. "In any case, this is mostly insurance so that they won't _lose_. The League have decided to drop all 'secret' operations and want to make a grand entrance."

"Sadogashima wasn't enough of a grand entrance?"

"A NEXT appearing out of nowhere and destroying a fleet is impressive. Having three Arms Forts raining absolute hell down onto a fleet inbound for a major port backed by Galaxy laser bombers is both a show of force and a majestic scene to behold."

"Can't argue with you there."

Kasumi stretched with a yawn. "This Earth's done pretty well, all thins considered - even though the USN's taken quite the beating."

"Don't forget the Royal Navy and the JMSDF; they did things too." Magnolia said, taking one last drag from her cigar before flicking the butt off the ledge. "Kept Europe and Japan safe."

"But not as much as the USN did during the early days of the Abyssal War. They were the ones to carry the Pacific theater all by themselves before the shipgirls arrived."

The United States Navy, once the most powerful wet-water force at this time, had been badly mauled by the Abyssals. Their technology, though outdated by her standards (or any of those currently present in this base's standards) had reaped quite the number of Abyssals, a testament of American engineering and firepower.

The problem was that they ran out of ammunition.

It was a stark truth; the Abyssals had more bodies than they had missiles and bullets. For all it's might, the US Navy could not hope to win a war of attrition - and unfortunately for them, that was the kind of war they were waging.

What was left of the navy once able to take on entire countries was left to provide support for the shipgirls that had come to the fore. Magnolia did her best to try and reduce damage to them as much as possible by sinking Abyssal vessels before they made contact without being seen, but she'd dropped the latter half this month simply because there was too many

"They were probably sucking obscene amounts of money from their budget trying to hit one of the humanoid ones anyway. On the other hand, those shipgirls could just launch their old prop planes and magically turn them into bloody chunks. The carrier girls, at least. Those battleship girls just wave their hands and things go _boom_."

"Quite so - but it still stands that the USN was responsible for holding the line until the Japanese girls arrived."

"Where are _their_ shipgirls? They fielded the biggest navy in the war, didn't they? That's gotta be a huge force multiplier right there."

"They only have a paltry sum of the shipgirls compared to Japan. The League doesn't know why, and I'm sure they don't, either. America _is_ doing research on it, so don't worry too much about them running you out of your job."

Even now the shipgirls were a mystery to the duo. They were running off the same information that the governments were: reincarnated spirits of vessels that had fought in World War II. _How_ they worked and _how_ they appear was still a mystery to both the League and the sovereign nations.

"What a fine mess this world is." Magnolia murmured. The LYNX's nose wrinkled slightly as she thought back to the attack on Sadogashima. "They've probably given me some sort of weird nickname by this point. My missions are starting to stray near the coast of America and Japan, and that means a lot more people are starting to see me in action. Bastards."

Kasumi suddenly turned her head to the side, hand clapped to her mouth. The operator's shoulders shook with what was very clearly suppressed mirth. Silence passed for a few seconds, before Magnolia spoke, voice dripping with false sweetness; "Kasumi? What are they calling me?"

Her operator holds up a finger as she calmed down, before turning her golden eyes to Magnolia's blue. "White Glint."

"...seriously?"

A nod. "Seriously. It's been plastered all over news sites and TV shows. 'White Glint saves US vessels from attack', 'White Glint sighted near Seattle', 'White Glint defends coastal town in Japan'..."

The LYNX pinches the bridge of her nose. "Wonderful."

"It does make sense," she could practically feel the undercurrent of mirth in Kasumi's voice, "you're currently Rank 9 in Collared, you pilot a _white_ NEXT, and you move too fast for people to see that you might as well be a _glint_ in the distance..."

"I'm nowhere near as skilled as the Hero of the LYNX War himself, though. And this baby," she jabs a finger to her NEXT, voice utterly incredulous, "is _Dissent_ , not _White Glint_. It's almost like I'm doing him a disservice!"

"Semantics, Magnolia. They don't know your NEXT is called Dissent, nor do they know what the significance of the name White Glint." Kasumi said, raising her hands in a placating gesture, keeping her eyes locked onto Magnolia's. "Honestly? Your image is all that matters to this Earth. In these dark times, where their future is uncertain, people will want to look up to a savior - whether it's the shipgirls or White Glint."

The other woman chose to rub her temples, releasing an exasperated exhale. "Damn it..."

For all her abrasive demeanour, Magnolia was ultimately a woman driven by her ideals. The world is twisted, but it was still worth fighting for. It was why she'd eventually broken off with Omer and joined up with Strayed to defend Line Ark, after all.

And this world was in need of help. A part of her suspected that it was the reason why she'd leapt at the call to arms from the League.

 _Damn hero complex._

Her operator patted her on the shoulder, coming up close to the slightly taller woman. "It'll be fine, Magnolia. Just do what you're already doing. Save convoys. Defend cities. Crush offensives in their crib. We're still a long way off from finishing this war, but we're getting there, inch by inch. Get some rest."

A sigh, before Magnolia gave her operator a nod, and walked off to her room to rest.

* * *

 **Dissent**

TYPE-LAHIRE frame

ARM UNIT R: ER-O705/051ANNR (switches between the two regularly)  
ARM UNIT L: 07-MOONLIGHT  
BACK UNIT R: MP-O901  
BACK UNIT L: CG-R500


End file.
